Over the past decade or so, astronomers have speculated about the characteristics of rogue planets in the Milky Way galaxy. These "free-floating" worlds don't orbit stars, but instead roam the ...

For over a decade, a dim but persistent glow near the center of the Milky Way has confused astronomers. This mysterious ...

IMAGE: An artist’s impression of a free-floating planet. Using observations and archival data from several of NSF’s NOIRLab’s observatories, together with observations from telescopes around the world ...

PoET and ESPRESSO telescopes are new tools that will eliminate stellar noise and detect Earth-like planets around Sun-like ...

Building on eight years of extraordinary discoveries by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS and SDSS-II), a new program of four coordinated surveys will revolutionize the study of the distant universe, ...

How many planets do you think are in this photo? At least hundreds of thousands according to a new joint Japan-New Zealand survey that scanned the center of the Milky Way in 2006-2007 looking for ...

The most common stars in the Milky Way may be even less friendly to life than previously suspected. New research suggests that red dwarf stars, stellar bodies smaller and less massive than the sun, ...

Astronomers have discovered a surprisingly "pristine" red giant with the lowest concentration of heavy elements ever seen in ...

(CNN) – Astronomers have discovered a rare family of six planets about 100 light years from Earth. The exo-planets are larger than the Earth but smaller than Neptune. The planets are in a ...

THE SEARCH for other planets in the Milky Way has exploded in the last 25 years. Scientists have moved from mere theories about their existence to proof borne out by years of study of shifting ...

Not long ago, astronomers counted the number of “exoplanets” detected outside our own solar system in the teens, then in the hundreds. Today the tally stands at just over 700. But the new study, ...

Using observations and archival data from several of NSF’s NOIRLab’s observatories, together with observations from telescopes around the world and in orbit, astronomers have discovered at least 70 ...